A crucial inconsistency in statements made by a British soldier who may have shot dead 17-year-old Jack Duddy on Bloody Sunday was highlighted at the inquiry yesterday and seems certain to give rise to intense controversy at a later stage.
A previously unpublished memorandum shown yesterday reveals that the British army's senior legal officer and a Treasury solicitor clashed so seriously while interviewing this soldier for the Widgery inquiry in March 1972 that the solicitor withdrew (or was withdrawn) from further involvement with the soldier's evidence.
Yesterday Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, revealed that a legal analysis carried out for the inquiry on various statements made by Lance Corporal V had identified "an inconsistency of a material character".
This soldier, a member of the Mortar Platoon of Support Company of the 1st Parachute Regiment, was in the first armoured personnel carrier to enter the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
In various statements given later to military police, Treasury solicitors, and in evidence to Widgery, he admitted shooting a man he claimed to have seen throwing what he claimed was a petrol bomb.
The vital inconsistency in his various accounts concerns whether he knew his target had already thrown his "bomb" when he fired at him. This apparent anomaly was identified by Prof Dermot Walsh in his analysis of the Widgery inquiry and is believed to have been one of the key factors which the Government subsequently employed to press the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to hold a new public inquiry into Bloody Sunday.
Yesterday the inquiry adjourned briefly so that a document could be scanned into the system. Mr Clarke told the tribunal chairman, Lord Saville: "It is an important document, it must be shown in public."
Counsel described it as a "file note" made on March 5th, 1972, by Mr John Heritage, who was one of the Treasury solicitor's staff taking statements for the Widgery inquiry.
It read: "In the course of my preliminary interview with V, before recording his statement, I invited him to tell me his account of what happened. He told me that he saw a man throw a bottle with a lighted fuse at its end. The bottle landed near S but the fuse came out in the air and the bottle did not explode.
"He said he kept an eye on the man who had thrown it as he moved back in the crowd. As soon as the movement of the crowd gave him a clear sight of the man, he shot at him and believed that he had hit him.
". . . I asked him if he could see anything in the man's hand. He replied, `No, sir, I cannot honestly say that I did.' "
The note goes on to describe how others present, an unnamed member of the army's legal team and the head of the army's Widgery tribunal team, Col H.M. Overbury, intervened at this stage, and the interview was held over pending discussions with counsel.
On returning, Col Overbury said he proposed to order V to make a statement; Mr Heritage said in that event he would give the soldier a warning against self-incrimination and record what he said; Col Overbury said in that event he would order or advise V not to give a statement.
In a statement provided to the present tribunal, Mr Heritage confirms that a disagreement occurred, but says that "in retrospect I believe that this was based on a misunderstanding".
He adds: "I now know . . . that the army team were acting on advice that a statement made in compliance with military orders could not be used against its maker in subsequent proceedings. At the time I do not believe that I was aware of this and I simply did not understand Lieut Col Overbury's approach."
Mr Heritage goes on to say that he referred the matter to Mr Basil Hall (now Sir Basil Hall), the solicitor to the (Widgery) inquiry, but "as Lieut Col Overbury and myself were not able to agree on the course of action that should be taken, I had no further involvement in recording soldier V's evidence from that time onwards."
Mr Christopher Clarke commented at yesterday's hearing that if the account given by soldier V in his statements to the military police and to Mr Heritage was accurate, "the tribunal may feel that the firing was not justified either by the yellow card or at all".
